"Adulting"

[newtogolf]

1 hour ago, boogielicious said:

This is a stunning generalization. Show me your evidence? It sound more like old guy pessimism on your part than anything substantial. Every week we can read about the successes of the next group of kids in High School and College. New discoveries, inventions, accomplishments from young people. They're doing fine.

I can say that all the kids my son grew up with are prepared for adulthood and are doing quite fine.

It's obviously a generalization, not every kid is like this but a majority I deal with fit the generalization.  

During the school year I am a mentor at my local H.S. FRC Robotics Team.  The kids are awesome and smart but also entitled and very naive to how the real world works.  Mommy and Daddy can tell you how special and wonderful you are but that doesn't mean your peers, teachers and future employers will agree.  You don't get to be a team lead because you "think you deserve it", or "need it for your college application", you earn it by acting like a leader and leading by example.  Many want to be associated with the the team but not put the work in.

The majority students I see are not equipped to handle disagreements or disappointment without their parents.   H.S. seniors parents coming to us to request "Sally" and "Johnny" not be on the same team because they dated over the summer and broke up so now Sally doesn't like "Johnny".  Well, there's only one software team so is Sally leaving the team or are they requesting "Johnny" get kicked off the team so "Sally" isn't uncomfortable.  

The amount of parental interference and micromanagement of their kids lives makes our jobs more difficult because as @CoachB25 posted, their kids are perfect and deserve everything be handed to them.  

[14ledo81]

"those who have enabled you your whole life, have disabled you for the future"...

Also, FWIW, I don't think this whole thread is "old guy" pessimism.  I agree wholeheartedly and am in my mid thirties.

Life is about competition.  Everyone has to compete for a job someday. If they are never taught how, it's going to be difficult.

[baller7345]

As another millennial, I can give my experience on how we are apparently overly entitled.  Sure, some of the people I went to school with are definitely struggling with their life, but that, I imagine, holds true with every generation.  My small group of friends, however seem to represent the generation much better.  One of us got their doctorate in physics and works at an observatory in Cincinnati, another (last I heard) is working in the business end of a Morgantown hospital, the third graduated with a degree in chemical engineering and currently lives in New Orleans, finally the last one may have got off to a worse start , but she is currently working her way through a degree in criminal justice.  I currently am one of two chemists in charge of a polymer lab and while I have a ton of school debt (which will start to disappear in a couple of years) I don't feel as if I'm a failure at being an adult. 

Many of the people I went to school with have managed to come out of our "soft" environments and have no trouble "adjusting" to the real world.  I think social media exaggerates the perceptions of the bad as well as the good.  You hear stories of someone being unable to make decisions for themselves and it tends to make bigger waves than someone who has graduated school and is living a completely successful, if mundane life.

[Gunther]

7 hours ago, jamo said:

Guys, please, I beg you, take it from a millennial: The problem is not participation trophies in 1st grade soccer. That's a ridiculous red herring people convince themselves actually matters so they can feel good about themselves. 

Also, the phrase "adulting" started as a tongue-in-cheek hashtag on social media. It's supposed to sound ridiculous. 

That was issued in a bubble with nothing substantive to support it.  No idea why you posted here but seems like something else on your mind.

My solution?  If you're worried about this sort of thing, get ur kids into higher level athletics.  No fake trophies there.

[saevel25]

6 minutes ago, Gunther said:

That was issued in a bubble with nothing substantive to support it.  No idea why you posted here but seems like something else on your mind.

My solution?  If you're worried about this sort of thing, get ur kids into higher level athletics.  No fake trophies there.

Most parents don't have kids who are talented enough to do that. 

How about not making your first response a fricken attack on the poster. You can make your point with out making snide comments. 

[Golfingdad]

12 minutes ago, Gunther said:

That was issued in a bubble with nothing substantive to support it.  No idea why you posted here but seems like something else on your mind.

My solution?  If you're worried about this sort of thing, get ur kids into higher level athletics.  No fake trophies there.

It was in the first paragraph of the op, you dipshit.  How about read the thread before being a dick?

[Ernest Jones]

20 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Most parents don't have kids who are talented enough to do that. 

How about not making your first response a fricken attack on the poster. You can make your point with out making snide comments. 

 

16 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

It was in the first paragraph of the op, you dipshit.  How about read the thread before being a dick?

WTF? Have y'all just met the Gunthman. You just don't recognize wisdom when you see it. You'll see, in the end, we will all learn to rue the day we missed our opportunities to learn from his wisdom and blinding brilliance. Shit, I gotta wear sunglasses just to read his posts and I long for the day when I can actually comprehend them. Until then, I'll just keep meditating and working on my chakras. Rome wasn't built in a day. 

[Rainmaker]

Nothing wrong with differing opinions, lol . . there have been some interesting points raised.  My kids are not Millennials so that's not who I'm thinking about, btw . .I'm just a few years older than the oldest Millenials myself.  

I personally don't think participation trophies are *the* issue . .and I don't think *the issue* is insurmountable . .ie . .that nobody will be able to succeed as an adult.  I was just sort of blown away that we seem to now need a special class to teach kids what they no longer learn just by growing up. 

If pressed, I think *the issue* is the lack of unsupervised, unstructured activities.  Kids today don't really "go play".  They go to soccer practice or they go to music class or they go to a playdate, birthday party or some other thing where the outcome is planned and equitable.  Then they enter "Adulthood" where nothing is planned or equitable . .and I'm not saying they *can't* adjust . .it just feels like we're doing them a disservice.  Of course they have anxiety over failure - they haven't had a chance to practice it. 

I remember when I was about 10 or so - we used to go play at this creek behind the baseball fields.  I got in my first and only real fist fight there. There were no grownups around.  No parents were called after the fact.  I can't remember who started it or what it was about but I lost.  By a lot.  Anyway - thats how I learned not to fight when I was 10 years old.  Lets say that parents were around and had stopped it . . I honestly would've been deprived of a valuable lesson . . one I might have had to learn later when the consequences were greater.  I don't know . .just rambling now, lol. . but it's a good story. 

[Gunther]

24 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

It was in the first paragraph of the op, you dipshit.  How about read the thread before being a dick?

I don't give a **** what the others think but I do have respect for you and have no idea what you're talking about.  Jamo said the issue wasn't about participation trophies but said nothing else.  I've talked with him a little, he's a reasonable kid.  I wasnt trying to demean.  He said nothing in his post and and I was curious what he was getting at.  I wasn't trying to be a dipshit there.

[Ernest Jones]

4 minutes ago, Gunther said:

 I've talked with him a little, he's a reasonable kid.  I wasnt trying to demean. 

[saevel25]

21 minutes ago, Gunther said:

.  He said nothing in his post and and I was curious what he was getting at.  I wasn't trying to be a dipshit there.

No you weren't. Your post had zero inclination you were seeking any sort of explanation. 

[iacas]

29 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

I personally don't think participation trophies are *the* issue . .and I don't think *the issue* is insurmountable . .ie . .that nobody will be able to succeed as an adult.  I was just sort of blown away that we seem to now need a special class to teach kids what they no longer learn just by growing up.

We don't need a class. Just teach your kids the right way.

Hell, my dad knew how to change the oil in a car. He knew how to find the best firewood, and how best to split it and all that. I take my car to the mechanic for oil changes. I look things up on the Internet when I don't know how to do things.

Times change. People change. Kids in my father's day and age didn't have to deal with the sexual pressures kids face these days. Or social media. I could easily make the argument that kids are actually asked to grow up FASTER these days, in a lot of areas, and indeed grow up more slowly in other areas.

29 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

If pressed, I think *the issue* is the lack of unsupervised, unstructured activities.  Kids today don't really "go play".

I see it all the time. They arrange it differently. When I was a kid we might call someone, but if nobody answered, we'd bike to their house and then to a few places they might likely be. We'd try to rustle up enough people to play four-on-four baseball sometimes, or wiffle ball in the back yard.

Today my daughter, all of 13, will walk with her friends to get a F'real (ice cream treat) from the Country Fair. They'll coordinate it on iMessage or SnapChat. They'll meet up in someone's yard to play in the pool. We've let her walk around our neighborhood (increasingly far) since she was 9.

Even when I was a kid, I'd walk to school a mile, carrying my trumpet, in all weather. And yet there were kids, even back then, who were driven to school every day even when the weather was perfect.

It's not new.

29 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

They go to soccer practice or they go to music class or they go to a playdate, birthday party or some other thing where the outcome is planned and equitable.

I think you're seeing what you want to see.

29 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

Then they enter "Adulthood" where nothing is planned or equitable . .and I'm not saying they *can't* adjust . .it just feels like we're doing them a disservice.  Of course they have anxiety over failure - they haven't had a chance to practice it.

My kid's not going to fail, and I'm not doing her a disservice. I know a lot of kids, too - I coach them in junior golf, I coach them in college golf, etc. I disagree that they're unprepared for reality. They're prepared for a different reality than the one we faced growing up, but they're prepared about as well as I was at 18.

29 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

I remember when I was about 10 or so - we used to go play at this creek behind the baseball fields.  I got in my first and only real fist fight there. There were no grownups around.  No parents were called after the fact.  I can't remember who started it or what it was about but I lost.  By a lot.  Anyway - thats how I learned not to fight when I was 10 years old.  Lets say that parents were around and had stopped it . . I honestly would've been deprived of a valuable lesson . . one I might have had to learn later when the consequences were greater.  I don't know . .just rambling now, lol. . but it's a good story.

So let your kid get into a fight. Sheesh.

But to play devil's advocate: do you really need to get beaten up to learn or understand that getting into a fight is a stupid idea?

We've treated my kid - she's an only child here - like an adult or a mature person from day one. We involved her in discussions with adults, etc. She's fine. She's well adjusted. She has good decision making skills, and we trust her to do the right thing, and to walk safely, and so on.

I don't think the world is anywhere near as dire as you suggest.

[billchao]

8 hours ago, Pete F said:

I was talking about similar things the other night at dinner with my brother and my mother. I'm one of four boys that all survived childhood. All in our 50s and 60s

We rode in cars without seatbelts, on trips we would sleep in the back of the wagon in sleeping bags.

Rode bicycles and skied without helmets.

Lived without antibacterial soaps

We had a summer house on a lake and went for the summer from the day after school was out till the day before it started, my mother would take our shoes away on  arrival otherwise they would surely be lost. When I was little the camp only had an outhouse and it never had a indoor shower. We bathed in the lake with Ivory Snow (It floats!) Once we could swim we could take the rowboat out of sight, fish all day and come back when we heard the bell ringing. We did'nt have cell phones.

At camp there was no tv, even at home there was only a few channels. We played Pitch or Whist every night on the back porch till it was time to go to sleep.

We played tackle football in a field at home without helmets or pads.

Climbed trees, skipped rocks, fished and fought and lived thru it all.

I'm not really sure what your point is. Did you survive despite doing questionably dangerous things? Obviously. Lots of people do, all the time, all over the world.

Of course there are others who don't. I knew a kid who died going out on thin ice at our local pond. I knew a kid who tried to pull a stupid stunt on a motorcycle and killed himself. I knew a kid who died of a drug overdose.

My uncle told me a story of how when they were kids, they used to swim in this river that they floated logs down it and tried to see who could swim under the most logs. One of his friends never came back up once.

My wife used to play on top of these old lime kilns by her house when she was a kid. Nobody she knew fell down and died, but that didn't make the activity any less dangerous.

I am alive despite having done a lot of stupid and dangerous things myself. Does that make what I did right or safe? Hell no. I'd love for my kids to learn the things I did without having to risk the things I was too stupid to realize I was risking at the time. I can't keep them from getting hurt, but I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure they don't get hurt too badly when they do.

Am I somehow tougher than my son is going to be because I wasn't coddled? I don't think so. I don't look back at all the stuff I did and beat my chest about how I managed to survive it all. Sometimes I feel I'm lucky just to be alive.

[Rainmaker]

38 minutes ago, iacas said:

We don't need a class. Just teach your kids the right way.

But there is a class . .it's being taught at East Carolina University . .I read about it and that inspired me to post the OP. 

38 minutes ago, iacas said:

I don't think the world is anywhere near as dire as you suggest.

No . .it totally is.  I saw it on Facebook.  I didn't actually mean to suggest that the world was in dire straights or that this is a huge, huge problem . .I just saw the article about the class and it resonated with me  .because I do kind of wish my kids would have the freedoms I did . .but they won't . .even though I'll, of course, do whatever I can to help them grow up into independent, capable adults . .and I do think they will do just that . .of course. 

As for getting beat up . .yeah, actually . .I do think it's something at least some kids need to experience...but, of course, I can't let my kids fight . .my parents wouldn't let me fight . .it's just something that happened because they weren't always around.  I can't remember now but I'm sure I got in trouble for fighting as well as beat up (by the other kid, not my parents, lol).      

[iacas]

3 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

But there is a class . .it's being taught at East Carolina University . .I read about it and that inspired me to post the OP. 

I don't care. The existence of something does not indicate a need for that thing.

4 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

No . .it totally is.  I saw it on Facebook.

I disagree the world is in as dire a position as you seem to think it is. I didn't say I disagree that there's a stupid class people don't need.

4 minutes ago, Rainmaker said:

As for getting beat up . .yeah, actually . .I do think it's something at least some kids need to experience...but, of course, I can't let my kids fight . .my parents wouldn't let me fight . .it's just something that happened because they weren't always around.  I can't remember now but I'm sure I got in trouble for fighting as well as beat up (by the other kid, not my parents, lol).

Okay, then, mandatory fights for all.

 (I know you're not saying that, but at the same time, I feel you missed the point of my post just to respond quickly to a few little pieces).

[Rainmaker]

21 minutes ago, iacas said:

 (I know you're not saying that, but at the same time, I feel you missed the point of my post just to respond quickly to a few little pieces).
 

yeah. .that is possible.  In essence, I don't really think we disagree.  We both think we are able to prepare our kids to be successful adults . .we both recognize that our experiences as kids were different.  Perhaps I lament it a little more than you . . we both definitely think this class is stupid, lol. 

Dang . .if I could hit a golf ball I'd think we were the same person, lol. 

 

[14ledo81]

4 hours ago, Golfingdad said:

It was in the first paragraph of the op, you dipshit.  How about read the thread before being a dick?

Name calling??

Not like you at all @Golfingdad.

[Golfingdad]

5 hours ago, Gunther said:

I don't give a **** what the others think but I do have respect for you and have no idea what you're talking about.  Jamo said the issue wasn't about participation trophies but said nothing else.  I've talked with him a little, he's a reasonable kid.  I wasnt trying to demean.  He said nothing in his post and and I was curious what he was getting at.  I wasn't trying to be a dipshit there.

I read it differently.  Regardless, I was feeling spicy and shouldn't have posted what I did.  I apologize.

---

Ironically enough, to be extremely on topic, I was reading tst and posting while sitting at a playground in Legoland.  One of the kids was making Lego guns, one was sliding down a slide upside down and backwards and I lost track of the little one for a bit.  Whoops.